Television: The Houston Hurricane

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Dan Rather is a country boy in a hurry

For all the hours he has logged on the air and on the road, Dan Rather made his most celebrated TV appearance so far in the space of some ten seconds. The date was March 19,1974, the place Houston, where Richard Nixon was holding a news conference at a convention of the National Association of Broadcasters. Those were the dying days of Watergate, and everyone in the hall anticipated excitement if Nixon's least favorite television reporter asked a question. Sure enough, up stood Rather—to an outbreak of applause and jeers from the onlooking broadcasters. When the noise died down, Nixon asked, "Are you running for something?" Rather answered quickly, "No, sir, Mr. President. Are you?"

Not long afterward CBS yanked Rather from the White House, then occupied by Gerald Ford, and the speculation surrounding that move centered on the propriety of Rather's Houston response: Had he stood up to the President or had he sassed him? Yet Nixon's question was oddly on target. Rather was indeed running for something that night, had been running for it all of his adult life, and would continue to do so long after Nixon resigned. He made his goal perfectly clear to the network executives bidding for his services: "I'd like to lead, and I want to be the best reporter of my time." Rather does not claim to be there yet, but when he takes over for Walter Cronkite next year, an immense audience will be on hand to watch him try.

Someone else in this spotlight might be daunted by the big bucks and the pressures they will generate, but evidently not Rather: "I believe I am as good as anybody." That self-confidence worked admirably for him during his more than 18 years at CBS. He rose through the ranks simply by being more aggressive and tenacious than the competition, working as many hours a day as his assignment called for and then adding a few more for good measure. Rather's ascent was also aided by his craggy good looks—no handicap in a visual medium—and by a canny sense of what the tube could do for him. He left nothing about his on-camera appearances to chance, including apparently spur-of-the-moment remarks. "We all give prior thought to our ad libs," says CBS News Correspondent Robert Pierpoint, "but Dan even writes down the colloquialisms in his ad libs. He thinks them through, and they give his stuff a quality." Indeed, Rather's Lone Star tropes have become something of a trademark. Interviewing G.O.P. Presidential Contender George Bush last month on 60 Minutes, Rather remarked. "To use a Texas phrase, there are people who say that George Bush is a nice fellow but that he's all hat and no cattle." Translation: some people think that Bush has no constituency.

"You're talking about the creation of an image," says one colleague and longtime Rather watcher. "It wasn't exactly bad for Dan Rather to have Richard Nixon after him. He was the perfect image of the tough reporter covering the Nixon White House. He's a guy who psyched out the networks, and particularly his own, a long time ago. He built Dan Rather."